Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional differences in learning preferences among Malaysian medical and health sciences students.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	WONG, REBECCA S.Y. SIOW, HENG LOKE KUMARASAMY, VINOTH SHAHERAH FADHLULLAH SUHAIMI, NAZRILA
Abstract	Introduction: The learner-centred approach in medical and health sciences education makes the study of learning preferences relevant and important. This study aimed to investigate the interdisciplinary, inter-institutional, gender and racial differences in the preferred learning styles among Malaysian medical and health sciences students in three Malaysian universities, namely SEGi University (SEGi), University of Malaya (UM) and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR). It also investigated the differences in the preferred learning styles of these students between high achievers and non-high achievers.Methods:This cross-sectional study was carried out on medical and health sciences students from three Malaysian universities following the approval of the Research and Ethics Committee,SEGi University. Purposive sampling was used and the preferred learning styles were assessed using the VARK questionnaire. The questionnaire was validated prior to its use.Three disciplines (medicine, pharmacy and dentistry) were chosen based on their entry criteria and some similarities in their course structure. The three participating universitieswere Malaysian universities with a home-grown undergraduate entry medical program and students from a diverse cultural and socioeconomic background. The data were analysed using the StatisticalPackage for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 22. VARK subscale scores were expressed as mean+standard deviation. Comparisons of the means were carried out usingt-test or ANOVA. A p value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant, and <0.001 as highly significant.Results:Both statistically significant interdisciplinary and inter-institutional differences in learning preferences were observed. Out of the 337 students,a majority of the participants were unimodal learners (n=263, 78.04%). The most common type of learners was the reading/writing type (n=92, 27.30%)while the kinesthetic subscale (M=6.98, SD=2.85) had the highest mean score. Female students (M=6.86, SD=2.86) scored significantly higher than malestudents (M=6.08, SD=2.41; t(249), p=0.014) in the auditory subscale, whereas Chinese students (M=5.87, SD=2.65)scored significantly higher than Malaystudents (M=4.70, SD=2.87; p=0.04) in the visual subscale. However, the mean VARK subscale scores did not differ significantly between high achievers and non-high achievers (p>0.05).Conclusion:This study gives an insight into the learner characteristics of more than one medical school in Malaysia. Such multi-institutional studies are lacking in the published literature and this study gives a better representation of the current situation in the learning preferences among medical students in Malaysia.
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ISSN	23222220
Journal	Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism [J Adv Med Educ Prof]
Volume Number	5
PubMed Central reference number	PMC5611425
Issue Number	4
PubMed reference number	28979910
e-ISSN	23223561
Language	English
Publisher	Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism
Publisher Date	2017-10-01
Publisher Place	Iran
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright: © Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism
Subject Keyword	Learning Medical students Health sciences
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Health Professions Education Medicine